UFC 112, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

After watching UFC 112 a lot of good has been overshadowed by the bizarre fight the involved Anderson Silva and Damian Maia. Most people were expecting a performance from Anderson Silva whose last 2 fights have left questions unanswered. Silva failed to answer those same questions again against Damian Maia.

In the first 2 rounds we saw the brilliance of Silva and the sheer terror he instills in his opponents. He had Maia where he wanted him, Maia had nothing to offer in the stand up and was unable to take Silva down. In my humble opinion it was very disrespectful of Silva to act the way he did by almost begging Maia to engage and touching the floor with both hands, even though it still showed his amazing ability it's not what fight fans and fans of Silva want to see.

When he seemed to be extremely upset by Maia's unwillingness to engage he let it be known in a very exaggerated way almost getting angry with Maia. But in the later rounds he did exactly the same thing. I don't blame Maia for not going toe to toe with Silva, neither would I, you fight to your strengths. Silva acted like a spoiled little child because someone wouldn't do what he wanted to do.

He said later that Maia had 'disrespected' him so he wanted to punish him. From what I could gather according to Silva the disrespect was aimed at his jiu jitsu, as Silva mentioned he was a black belt, but he failed to give a clear explanation of what or where the disrespect came from. If he was so upset by this why didn't he take the fight to the ground and show Maia he could grapple just as good as he could.

In conclusion it seems that Silva has either become extremely bored or extremely arrogant in his fighting. I say bored because he seemed to have had lost all interest half way through the fight, I say arrogant because he expects everyone to fight him the way he wants them to fight playing to his strong points as a fighter.